Cities Subordinate Beauty to Durability in ‘Site Furniture’ : It’s Survival of the Fittest on Streets
Bus benches, aluminum picnic tables and steel trash barrels seldom command much respect from the public they are designed to serve.
They are defaced with graffiti, carved up, stolen and, in the case of the tables, sometimes converted into ramps for loading vehicles into pickup trucks.
That is why special care must be taken in the design of what landscape architects call “site furniture”--benches, planter boxes, trash receptacles, drinking fountains and lighting fixtures that dot city streets and parks.
Their looks are important, especially in a city like Glendale where downtown redevelopment and beautification projects are geared to attract people back to the city streets. But so is the “furniture’s” ability to survive the streets.
As a result, designers and officials are torn between aesthetics and the reality of vandalism and practicality. That conflict has come to the forefront recently because Glendale and other Southern California cities are paying more attention to the urban “street scene.” And, since millions of dollars are involved, the choices can be difficult ones.
“Municipalities have become very discriminating in their selection of site furniture,” said Evan Graves, Glendale’s landscape architect. “They are willing to spend more up front in capital improvements to have things last. A private developer who builds a shopping center and sells it to somebody else is not really concerned if furniture starts disintegrating in three years.”
So, Graves said, durability and low maintenance often take precedence over design and cost. “Some of the stuff is really weird looking, downright ugly,” he said, “but functional.”
City benches, for instance, should be comfortable to sit on, but not so comfortable that they invite overnight guests, said Robert Cardoza, an Orange County design consultant. He suggests that benches have backs, which allow users to relax, but also have dividers in the seat to prevent transients from sleeping on them. “We’re looking for comfort, but not lasting comfort,” he said.
Glendale city officials, on the other hand, said backs on benches are frequent targets for graffiti. The city instead will spend about $240,000 in state gas-tax funds within the next year to replace all of the 550 wooden commercial bus benches in Glendale with backless concrete ones, said City Manager James Rez.
“We’re constantly looking for new equipment that is more durable,” said Robert K. McFall, director of Glendale’s Parks and Recreation Division, which switched five years ago to buying concrete picnic tables to replace worn wooden, fiberglass and aluminium ones.
Most building materials have drawbacks, McFall said. “Wood tables are carved up, require annual repainting and splinter. Fiberglass breaks relatively easily. Aluminum tends to bend, is light and gets moved around unless chained down, and the ribbed pattern on top makes it hard to clean,” he said--not to mention its unfortunate utility as truck ramps.
The parks department spent $24,000 last year to remove graffiti, much of it scrawled on the more susceptible wood and aluminum tables, McFall said.
Concrete tables, on the other hand, are durable, easy to clean and are “vandal resistant,” McFall said. The city has purchased only concrete tables for the last five years, even though they cost about $600 each, contrasted with $400 for wood or aluminum.
Earlier this year, Glendale removed the wooden slat benches that encircled sidewalk trees on Brand Boulevard in the Downtown Redevelopment Project and replaced them with cement planters topped by blue and maroon tile seats. Rez said the wood benches had been carved on and had deteriorated since they were installed in the street beautification project in 1979. “We’ve learned from our mistakes,” Rez said.
A $3.8-million street beautification project now under way on northern Brand Boulevard includes about $175,000 for planter boxes, benches, news racks and other elements similar to those along Brand between Colorado Boulevard and Lexington Drive.
Meanwhile, in Glendale parks, dozens of steel drums and plastic trash cans, which cost as little as $8 apiece, are being replaced with 800-pound aggregate stone containers that are worth $350 each and are glued in place.
Many Are Stolen
McFall said the old cans “have become a popular item for people to take.” He said about 200 trash cans disappear or are damaged each year. The weight of the new cans is supposed to discourage theft but is not a guarantee. For example, a dozen concrete planters, weighing 1,500 to 2,500 pounds each and worth a total of $10,000, disappeared one night last year from a building project in Westwood, according to Tom Seifert of Dura Art Stone, a Fontana manufacturer of precast concrete furniture.
Manufacturers of street furniture say that vandalism forces them to build their products far stronger than those designed for home use. A concrete bench, for example, contains a greater proportion of cement--the strengthening element--than the foundation of a house, according to the Portland Cement Assn. of Chicago.
Concrete furniture is hand-polished to a smooth finish and covered with several layers of acrylic sealer to ease the removal of graffiti. All of that makes site furniture “enormously expensive,” said Lawrence R. Moss of Glendale, a landscape architect and consultant. Concrete benches, for example, cost about $450, according to city officials.
Other Cities Share Problem
Glendale is not alone in seeking innovative ways to outwit vandals and cut maintenance costs. The City of Long Beach recently replaced the traditional steel trash cans at its parks and beaches with giant, 220-gallon green plastic tubs weighted down with concrete rings. William Sweeney, manager of the Long Beach Bureau of Park Facilities, said the change has streamlined trash collection, reducing costs and, because the small cans in the past often overflowed, also has reduced the amount of litter.
The City of Inglewood bought concrete refuse containers that weigh 1,200 pounds each, bolted them to the sidewalk and covered the outside with clear plastic bags to protect them from graffiti.
Many manufacturers produce their own line of site furniture, but they give cities credit for originating many of the designs. “Vandalism by the public has forced cities and their designers to be more practical,” said Gene Mariani, design director for Dura Art Stone. “Typically, they have their own designers who come up with an original concept and we fabricate the pieces to make them fit.”
Fountains Modified
In Glendale, Graves boasts that city staff members caught a design flaw in drinking fountains ordered from a major national manufacturer. The fountains had three-quarter-inch drain pipes that Graves said would clog because children often pour sand into fountains. The city called the manufacturer and ordered that 1-inch drain pipes be installed instead, with easy-access clean-outs.
“Part of our job on the staff is to look at the nuts and bolts of the element,” Graves said. “We find just subtle things that, if not caught, can turn into major headaches.”
In the past, cities gave little thought to their choice of street furniture, Moss said. Benches and other items, he said, “were just stuck here and there out of the human desire to fill space.” But now, he said, the choices are carefully made.
Officials Make Decisions
So who decides what is good or bad design? Many East Coast cities, such as New York, have an art commission, which is responsible for assessing the artistic merit of all street furniture. But decisions in most Southern California cities are usually left up to a few government officials, manufacturers and city employees said.
In Glendale, for instance, the specifications for proposed new bus benches were drawn by a city engineer, based on a sample, 1,200-pound concrete bench selected by the public works director, city manager and his assistant. “We chose a very simple one,” said Rez, the city manager.
The sidewalk design on upper Brand Boulevard evolved after 2 1/2 years of study by city departments and a group of citizen advisers, said Rez. The actual pattern of bricks and stone aggregate on the sidewalk was designed by the city’s planning director, Gerald Jamriska, who “leaned over the drafting table one day and drew it, brick by brick,” recalled one of the planners.
Design to Be Extended
“We wanted the street to be harmonious, in terms of colors, the scale of pedestrian areas and in materials that could be easily maintained,” said Jamriska. “We wanted to achieve a style that would be more personalized to the human scale.” Obviously, the city is pleased with its decision, since the same street design is being extended north from Lexington to Arden Avenue.
Stephen K. Smith, a landscape architect who works with Moss, said cities “had a laissez faire attitude about decorating for so many years, it was just hit and miss.” Now, he said, “New doors are opening and cities are becoming aware” of the importance of design elements.
Smith has proposed a major redesign of a three-mile stretch of Foothill Boulevard in the City of La Canada Flintridge. He proposes that the city widen sidewalks and develop Craftsman-style bench shelters using native rock and heavy, wood-beam slat roofs. “Street furniture can really change the character of a community, make it more lively and alive,” he said.
Brighter Colors
A trend has emerged in Southern California site furniture toward more vibrant colors such as mauve, light green, blue, even orange and red. For example, the “ugly brown” steel drums used as trash bins in Glendale parks are being replaced with orange or blue plastic barrels, in addition to concrete receptacles, according to McFall.
Lino Torres, Glendale sanitation supervisor, said he is considering repainting all of the city’s 3,100 commercial trash bins, which he now describes as “bland beige.”
Torres said he thinks a brighter color, such as powder blue or pale green, could more effectively “attract trash.”
Moss suggested, in all seriousness, that the containers be painted pink. “There’s no reason why trash bins can’t be fun,” he said.
